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Deutsche Bank has reorganized its foreign exchange sales division as the department has continued to grow. Ken Reich, head of fx sales for North and South America, has been promoted to global head of sales. He will continue to report to Colin Grassie, regional head of the institutional client group for the Americas. Rashid Hoosenally, European head of fx sales and a member of the global fx management committee, is now head of fx client strategy and remains a member of the committee. He previously reported to Grassie and now reports to Jim Turley, global head of fx.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has liberalised the last areas of its Singapore dollar currency control to encourage capital market development. Lee Hsien Yoong, Singapore's deputy prime minister, minister for finance and head of the MAS, announced the regulation changes at the Euromoney Asia Pacific Issuers and Investors Forum held in Singapore this week.

CapitaLand, southeast Asia's largest property development company, yesterday (Thursday) completed the sale of a S$380m five year convertible bond. The deal, arranged by sole bookrunner JP Morgan Securities (SEA), opens the Singapore dollar convertible market and will grab the attention of other local companies, which will be enticed by the 0.625% coupon and 29% conversion premium.

AM Corporation, the Australian superannuation and investment manager, is planning to launch a A$295.7m deal backed by endowment policies. Lead managed by Salomon Smith Barney Australia Securities, the deal is the first of its kind in Australia and those involved say it may be one of the first transactions of this type in the world. "We certainly see it as a first," said Andrew Palmer, an analyst at Standard & Poor's (S&P) in Melbourne who rated the transaction.

Crédit Lyonnais may have started the year slowly but it is putting on a late burst at the end of the first quarter. The French bank completed one deal this week and has two more IPOs set to be priced in the next couple of weeks. This week the bank completed a Eu66m secondary offering for Pierre et Vacances, the French holiday accommodation provider. The sale of 977,500 shares was launched on March 11. The bank then kept the books open for eight working days, closing the deal and pricing it on Wednesday night. The new shares were priced at Eu67.5, a slim 1% discount to the stock's close before the issue was launched. The deal was four times oversubscribed.

Investors are displaying record levels of optimism about the prospects for the European economy, according to a Merrill Lynch survey of 266 fund managers. A net 99% of fund managers expect corporate profits to improve within the next 12 months - but in the short term, appetite for risk remains low.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) focused on the Japanese retail investor base on Monday for an A$880m three year Uridashi bond. The deal was the biggest Australian dollar denominated deal for almost four years and the largest Uridashi bond ever. Nomura was the sole lead manager. The World Bank, taking advantage of the liquidity available, also accessed the market, launching a $400m four year Uridashi and a Eu200m five year Uridashi deal yesterday (Thursday). Both issuers are triple-A rated.

* Union Bank of Norway Rating: A1/A/A+

Prudential financial (Prudential), the US life insurer, has followed up the signing of its $1 billion global CP facility last week with a $1.5 billion Euro-MTN shelf. JPMorgan has scooped the arrangership. It is the first US programme to come to the market this year and is also JPMorgan's first arrangership in 2002. Since the start of 2001, 10 US borrowers have set up MTN programmes and the latest signing was JPMorgan International Derivatives's $1.5 billion Euro-MTN facility that was established in September 2001. Prudential's programme is rated A3 and A- by Moody's and Standard & Poor's respectively. Deutsche Bank is the only dealer appointed to both Prudential's global CP and Euro-MTN programmes and the bank is joined on the Euro-MTN programme dealer panel by the arranger, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney and UBS Warburg.

Tariq Rafique, the head of securitisation and asset finance at Nomura in London, continued to develop his structured finance team this week when Christian Marx was appointed head of CDO structuring, Rafique is keen to expand all areas of the firm's securitisation and asset finance business, and sees CDOs as an increasingly important field. "Substantial opportunities are emerging in the European CDO market and what we have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg," said Rafique. "We have put ourselves in a position to take advantage of such opportunities."

* Banco Español de Crédito SA Rating: Aa1